


six short stories about crushes

by minormendings



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Bisexuality, Canon compliant through 4x8, Eliot is dumb but we love him anyway, Multi, this is self indulgent don’t mind me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 15:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18123164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minormendings/pseuds/minormendings
Summary: Quentin figures himself out.





	six short stories about crushes

**Author's Note:**

> this show got me bad y’all. I just haven’t seen much discussion of Q’s bisexuality outside of/before his relationship with Eliot that’s relatable to me as a bi person, so I’m putting some out there myself. Also, I’m an Alice Quinn stan first and foremost, so I like to think niffin!Alice’s infamous “garbage fire of a relationship that ended with Eliot’s dick in your mouth” line comes from niffin!Alice’s general malice and not regular Alice’s biphobia, and I’ve written her as such. 
> 
> please be gentle (this is my first fic in literal years), but please enjoy!

Quentin is thirteen and his paladin is in trouble. 

“Dude, Nick, this is so unfair,” Sara complains, and swears when the dice tower she’s been building falls with a clatter. “You know the first thing you always do in a new village is go to the tavern, you can’t just make the tavern a trap! That’s, like, blasphemy against the gods of DnD, or whatever.”

Nick just grins and launches into the barkeep’s Bond-villain monologue, clearly relishing the air of villainy and grandiose manner of speaking he’s given this NPC. He’s so good at this, Quentin thinks, no wonder he was so hard to look away from in the school’s production of Macbeth. It’s so unfair he’s such a good actor, so good at writing stories like this on the fly. It’s so unfair how his eyelashes are so long, and his hair is so adorable you just want to get your hands into it, and...wait, what?

The next few thoughts go through Quentin’s brain in about two seconds flat. _Oh god am I gay no wait I can’t be gay I think Buttercup from The Princess Bride is incredibly cute so I just, like, can tell that Nick is a good-looking guy and that’s all._

_But if I were gay, I guess I’d have a crush on Nick._

_Huh._

Later that night, feeling safe after confirming that there’s no way he can be into Nick, Quentin doesn’t even feel guilty watching a little too closely as Nick, getting deep into character to roleplay a tavern scene, puts his pretty mouth to a bottle of Coke. 

 

Quentin is fifteen, and _furious_. 

It’s worse because he has no right to be furious, he thinks, furiously, as he storms down the street from Julia’s house. James and Julia are his best friends, he should be happy they finally got together after like a whole year of sighing after each other. And he never even made a move on Julia, so she couldn’t have known she was hurting him when she called him excitedly to tell him James finally kissed her. 

He loves James, James is a great friend, so he shouldn’t be mad at him but Quentin just can’t help it. Stupid James with his clean-cut all-American boy good looks, he’s always the one people pay attention to, isn’t he, and now he’s kissing Julia—

Quentin’s stomach twists imagining it, first with jealousy and then with something else. _They’re probably kind of hot together,_ he thinks, _Julia’s so gorgeous and James...oh Jesus I’m into James too._

The realization hits him like a semitruck and he stops in his tracks. What the hell does _that_ mean? Is it just James, like an I’d-go-gay-for kind of thing, or is this bigger than James? Quentin has no fucking clue. 

 

Quentin is eighteen and rewatching The Princess Bride for the first time in awhile. Next to him on the couch, Julia is nestled under James’s arm, her face glowing like a jewel in the light from the TV as she mouths one of the lines from the “to the pain” scene. Quentin still aches a little to see them together. But more than that, he's glad the three of them are still together in another way, friends against the world. 

He turns back to the movie and laughs to himself when he realizes what went over his head at age thirteen: Buttercup’s ingenue good looks aren’t the only reason he used to be obsessed with this movie. Cary Elwes is unfairly hot even with that stupid little mustache, and spread out on Buttercup’s bed like that? Abso _lute_ ly. 

 

Quentin is twenty, and — “Oh, fuck.”

“What is it, Q?” Julia cranes her neck to read the Drunk Jenga block Quentin’s just pulled. She bursts out laughing when she sees the words “tell your most embarrassing sex story.”

“Oh my god Q, if you don’t tell your Frat House Kitchen Guy story from freshman year I will personally murder you,” she says gleefully. 

Q groans and slumps so far out of his seat he slithers onto the floor. “I knew karma was going to get me for making you tell that story last round but did it have to be so _soon_?”

“Wait,” says that girl in the corner—Kathryn? Katie? She’s the only one Quentin doesn’t know at this party, a friend of a friend or something— “frat house _guy_ story? I thought you had a girlfriend?”

The bottom drops out of Q’s stomach as he waits for her to get it, wanting her to know, hating to have to explain it. She continues, oblivious, “Hey, I guess college is the time to experiment, right?”

“Not exactly.” Q knows from experience that the best way to deliver a line like that is with devastating confidence, direct eye contact, and an eyebrow slightly lifted as if the other person is just a bit stupid. He also knows that he’s never once pulled this off right. It comes out as more of a mumble and Quentin waits for death. 

“What—“ Kathryn-Katie starts to say, but Julia cuts her off. “Q’s bi, dumbass.”

Friend-of-a-friend-Kathryn-Katie starts to protest but Q doesn’t care, doesn’t even hear it in the rush of affection he feels for Julia. He clears his throat.

“Okay! Let me get this over with and then _you_ ” —he jabs a finger at Julia, mock accusing but with a smile on his face — “better watch out next round, I’ll get you back for this.

“So freshman year, James invited me to his first frat party as a brother, and the house was totally disgusting, right, but this one guy . . .”

 

Quentin is twenty-two and his brain is quiet for once. Alice is propped up against the headboard and he’s lying contentedly against her as she strokes his hair. Maybe it’ll turn into something else in a little while, but for now he’s perfectly happy to just lay here with his girlfriend in a patch of sunlight coming through the Cottage’s windows.

“Hey,” Alice says after a while. 

“Hey.”

“We never talked about it, but . . .” She pauses. “You know I don’t care that you’re into guys too, right?”

“I figured, or you would’ve run away screaming when Margo made me tell the Frat House Kitchen Guy story after she beat me at Push last week,” he says, more lightly than he feels. He trusts Alice, but conversations like this always make his heart rate speed up a little, even after all these years of knowing himself. 

“Do you…” She’s choosing her words carefully. God, that’s what he loves about Alice, she’s always so deliberate in her love. “Would you use use any particular word? To describe yourself, I mean.”

“I like the word bisexual, but I’m not, like, flags and parades about it. I just talk about guys and talk about girls and hope everyone figures it out, you know?”

“Like the Frat House Kitchen Guy story?” she says, laughing at him just a little. 

“God, I’m never gonna live that down, am I.” He laughs with her and rolls over in her arms, kissing her lightly. She pulls him down to her, kissing back with intent. 

“Nope,” she says after a long moment, pulling away a little. “But seriously, I just wanted you to know it doesn’t matter to me.” She studies him for a second with that serious gaze of hers, like she’s trying to transmit her good intentions telepathically. After a few seconds she adds, more lightly, “Honestly, it’s even better for me. Did you know that statistically, bi men are supposed to be better partners than straight men?”

Quentin’s heart warms. She’s been doing _research_ , because she’s Alice so of course she has. He loves her so much like this, kind and so much smarter than him and bathed in the afternoon light. He can’t quite bring himself to say it, though, and then suddenly the love is spilling over into want—he wants her, his Alice, gasping and falling apart. “If you’re using the word ‘statistically,’ I’m not doing my job,” he says in her ear, and then kisses her again, then lower, and lower, until she’s forgetting how to breathe above him. 

 

Quentin is twenty-four and desperately needs a break. He’d barely gotten one frantic reconciliation with Eliot after exorcising the Monster for good before urgent matters of state called and they’d had to leave for the Lorian border. After a full day of tense meetings with Idri’s generals, they’d checked into an inn, Q was finally going to get the chance to talk to him—but now Eliot is laughing his ass off. 

Quentin collapses on the bed, drapes an arm over eyes, and groans. 

“It’s not funny!”

“Quentin, it’s _hilarious_.”

“Why didn’t they recognize me? Do I need to start putting my face on the coins?”

“To be fair,” says Eliot reasonably, though still chuckling, “you don't do as much of the public stuff as I do. And I thought you found it romantic to wander among your people disguised as one of them.”

“Yeah, but now the innkeeper thinks the high king is, like, having a secret tryst with a commoner or...or something.” Quentin is annoyed to realize he’s blushing furiously. 

“I thought we were having a secret tryst, my loyal subject,” Eliot replies. He’s teasing, but there’s a heat underneath it. Quentin opens his eyes as Eliot crawls into the bed with him, and pulls Eliot down into a kiss. 

After a long moment, Eliot pulls back, grinning wickedly and clearly admiring the way he’s got Quentin breathing hard already. ”You’re blushing, my darling commoner,” he says, nipping at Quentin’s neck. Quentin gasps and arches back, baring the column of his throat almost showily. When he opens his eyes again, Eliot’s surprised and delighted expression is so, so gratifying. 

“So,” Quentin says, trying for a wicked grin of his own and surprised to find that it actually works, judging by Eliot’s expression, “in this fantasy of yours, I’m what, a nice farm boy who’s been courting the girl down the street and never dreamed about being with a man before?” 

He knows Eliot’s going to say the wrong thing even before he says it. Quentin would—Quentin _has_ crossed oceans and hunted gods to save this man. He loves Eliot, knows Eliot is a master magician and all Fillory could ever want in a high king, but sometimes Eliot is so _stupid_. 

“Of course, until you saw me riding past and thought—“ but Eliot couldn’t finish his thought, because in one fluid movement Quentin has wrestled him onto his back and bitten his collarbone, hard. “ _Fuck_ , Q, where did that come from?”

Quentin looks him in the eye, willing him to finally get it. “You know I’m not that farm boy, right? Eliot, I’m bi, I’ve known since I was fifteen.” He takes a breath. “And I want to be with you, for real, if you’ll let me. Even though we have other options, I choose you.”

Eliot looks stricken. “I choose you too, Q, of course I choose you. I’m so sorry for thinking you were just bored, or whatever, and . . . for being so afraid.” Quentin smiles and kisses him once, softly, letting him know it’s all right. 

“Ok, so,” says Eliot, putting seriousness aside again with a half smile, just a quirk of his mouth that makes Quentin want to do unspeakable things to him, “I’m a little disappointed you weren’t just seduced to my side by my dashing good looks— _God_ ”— he says fervently as Quentin bites him again—“but I must say that does open up the possibilities for tonight.”

“Yeah, I think it does,” said Quentin mock-seriously, bending down to kiss him, gentle again, on the mouth. “I think we have worlds of possibilities.”

**Author's Note:**

> come find me eternally yelling about this show/book series at glorious-twentyfifth.tumblr.com


End file.
